Posted on behalf of the Prospective Professor

The calls to request interviews started to come late in October and the interviews themselves started as soon as mid-November. The visits last for 1-2 days and seem to follow the same general schedule, meals out with faculty, short meetings with 10-20(!) different people and two seminars, one describing previous research accomplishments and one detailing the proposed research plan (otherwise known as the “chalk talk” even though everyone uses slides).

It’s a spectacular experience to meet with so many people in the chemistry world. These will be my life long colleagues. I will see them at conferences and study sections, review their papers and they will review mine. I’ve learned about research that I might never have read about on my own accord, but that I’ve found incredibly intriguing. I’ve discussed my future plans with countless people and with each visit my ideas are challenged, analyzed and ultimately strengthened.

Despite the excitement, the novelties of travel wear off pretty quickly. Depending upon where you are coming from and going to, your internal clock will either make you extremely tired in the morning, or unbelievably groggy during dinner. And after a while the thrill of flying to a new place, staying in a fancy hotel and eating every meal out feels more like being trapped in a flying tin box towards a destination where you will stay in a sterile looking room with a hard bed while eating approximately 4x more food than usual. I never thought I’d see the day when the sight of the dessert menu makes me mildly queasy.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a privilege to have the opportunity to visit these institutions, but I can’t help feeling a bit out of sorts as I sit on the floor of an airport waiting for a delayed flight while wearing the same suit that I’ve had on for the last week…

What great news to come back to after the holidays! The writings of four Nature Network bloggers have been chosen to be part of an anthology of the best science blog posts of 2007, called Open Laboratory 2007. The book will be available in bookstores and from Amazon, hopefully by the middle of this month, according to Bora Zivkovic, who lead the charge this year in putting together the anthology (last year’s anthology, also Bora’s doing, was only available online).

Out of the more than 450 nominated entries, 52 were chosen by a panel of more than 30 judges; the winning posts include these from Nature Network bloggers:

Deanne Taylor, a research scientist with the Harvard School of Public Health, describes what changes need to be made to boost faculty diversity in science.

Kristin Stephan, a Tufts graduate student, discusses how difficult, but necessary, it is for PhD students in grad school to learn about careers outside of academic science.

Henry Gee, an editor with Nature, writes lovingly about his 9-year-old daughter with Asperger’s Syndrome and how having Asperger’s might help her become a good scientist.

Jennifer Rohn, a postdoc at University College London, documents in this series of four posts her return to the lab and academic science after four years as a journal editor. Required reading for anyone contemplating a career change.

Congratulations!

Thanks also to Anna Kushnir, another one of our bloggers, for being one of the judges.